Need help in project........my project is controlling traffic depending on its density.......i.e i'll determine the density of vehicles by placing 3 sets of lasers separated by particular distances....i'll allow the heaviest/lowest traffic lane first or some what like that.....

well i'll explain it in detail to make it good for you to understand me.......and best me to get help from you

For this i want to connect these lasers and the signals (LED's) to the printer port (parallel port)....i'll be having 12-16 LASER's and 12-16 LED's...
Browsing the net i learned a bit about parallel port...like it has 8-data bits (output pins) and 5-status bits (input pins)....

My question is how should i connect this 12-16 LASER's to 5-Status bits and 12-16 LED's to 8-data bits...i know i'll need Multiplexers/ de-multiplexers but which one should i use where and what is the number/name of it.

I might need a 4:16 MUX and a 16:4 DMUX ...am i right???

Secondly if its so.....then for a multiplexer i'll need 4 address pins and a data pin...so which of the 8-data pins of parallel port (printer port) D0-D7 should i use as a data pin and which one all as address pins??

Well i'll be still left with the coding part (JAVA)......but i want to complete this first